Like this:

Yes I’m still alive, yes I still work for Arik, and yes I realize why these thoughts must run through some people’s heads when I don’t post for almost three months!  It’s not good ooo (Nigerian accent)!  Alas, here I am, and all is well!  It really is.  I can’t complain. 

I’ve been busy!  I had almost 7 weeks of vacation, including 3 extra weeks because my fleet manager is trying to balance out rotations for the Q400 first officers.  It doesn’t make sense to have too many pilots one month, and not enough the following month, so he is modifying our rotations accordingly.  So I’ll skip all the mumbo jumbo and jump right into what I have been up to this rotation at Arik!

This is my 10th rotation here in Nigeria with Arik Air.  It’s a walk in the park these days, I’m very comfortable here.  I was more excited than usual this time to come back and continue flying the Q400.  It had been a longer time than usual without flying, and I was looking forward to being at the controls again and burning holes through the sky.  Unfortunately before I could do that, I had to be flown up to the UK for 6 days to do recurrent training.  Of course it really wasn’t too unfortunate, who else wouldn’t like a free and paid trip up to a foreign city to sight-see, eat awesome food, and fly a full motion simulator.  That’s what I thought.

Kelvin, my captain going with me to recurrent training was brand new to the company, but not to Nigeria.  He worked indirectly for Arik Air through Denim Air, which used to operate Q300s here.  He also flew for another company flying the Q400 before coming here.  I spent some of the time familiarizing him with the way we operate the Q400 here at Arik Air.  Since he just recently came from another company, he had to try his best to forget the old and learn the new where the procedures differed.  Our manuals are still a bit limiting and need a lot of work, so he didn’t have much available to him to study; however, the good news is that amendments have been made and will be implemented shortly.  It’s just too bad we didn’t have those before we went to sim. 

Anyways, for us, the most difficult part of the journey wasn’t the simulator sessions, it was first finding an efficient and economical way to get to Exeter, and later, how to get from our hotel to the training facility.  Where is Exeter?  Maybe you know, maybe you don’t.  I know I didn’t.  Exeter happens to be a city about 3-4 hours South West of London in the United Kingdom.  A fairly well known airline (Flybe) has a brand new training facility located at the airport, which is where we had our Q400 recurrent training. 

Kelvin and I arrived around 7pm at London Heathrow airport only to see an amazingly long line at customs.  We contemplated what to do, because it would likely take several hours just to make it through customs and we didn’t have several hours to spare.  We had a charter bus to catch.  Kelvin asked a customs officer if we could possibly bypass the line since we were Arik Air crew, and she said yes!  So up to the front of the line we went, and in minutes we were on the other side, phew!!!

We proceeded to catch the train to terminals 1 and 3 where after paying an extra fee, we were able to exchange our tickets for an earlier departure (which we never thought we’d make during our planning).  We each grabbed some sandwiches and snacks for the 3.5 hour bus ride ahead of us, hopped on board, and away we went.

We arrived at our hotel (pictured above) just before midnight, and went straight to our rooms to get some well needed rest after a long day of traveling.  The hotel was quite nice, very quaint.  It had free wifi, free breakfast, and a great inexpensive restaurant for which we had a 20% discount.  Arik Air gives us a certain amount of money per day which we must use for food, transportation and lodging, and the Flybe academy had scheduled taxis to pick us up on each day of training.  It was going to be about 24 pounds (12 pounds each) a day, amounting to at least 72 pounds not counting tips for the 3 days.  Just out of curiosity, I called a couple rental car companies and amazingly the rates were really good!  Even the person on the phone was surprised how good the rates were.  For 55 pounds, we’d have a car for 4 days and three nights, and could just leave the car in our hotel parking lot before we left on our last day!  So not only did we save some money, but now we had the ability to drive somewhere, and that’s what we did.  On our first day in Exeter, we had a day to settle in, so we picked up the car and drove to the beach which was about 20 minutes or so to the south.  We just stopped at a few beaches and walked around.

The funniest part was watching Kelvin drive on the left side of the road for the first time.  In Europe, automatic cars are scarce, and the cost to rent them, at least in the UK, is much more expensive.  I have never driven a manual car (although I know the principle of how to do it), so it would be a disaster to start now, driving on the left side of a road in a foreign country haha!  So needless to say, Kelvin was the lucky one who got to drive since he’s used to driving manual vehicles.  On a few occasions he wanted to go against traffic but luckily I was there to remind him to stay on the left.  On the highway we drove the speed limit yet cars were passing us 15-20 mph faster regularly, so I suppose the limits there are not too closely enforced.  Kelvin got better and better each day to the point where he looked quite comfortable (compared to the first day). 

I plan to learn how to drive a stick shift when I get a chance in the US so that when I visit Europe, I’m not forced to pay much higher costs for an automatic.  Plus it’s just a good thing to know.  Leanna and I have talked about living in Europe after she graduates for a little while.  Spain and Italy specifically to learn to speak the languages fluently (I hope).  I speak Spanish and she speaks Italian, so yeah, that’s that.

As you can see, it’s a beautiful place. I stupidly deleted all of the pictures I had taken with my phone when messing with the software trying to fix the GPS. We had wandered all around the downtown area which has beautiful buildings and architecture.  We were both very impressed. 

I bought a Vodafone sim card for 10 pounds, and it gave me 300mb data, and 300 free texts, along with 10 pounds of calling credit!  So I was set for the week, and will be ready for future trips up here.  Anyways, on to the actual training, which always seems to be the shortest portion of these simulator posts!  Probably because it’s all about the journey and destination, the simulator is just work, per se.

 

Recurrent Training

Training was great!  We had a very experienced ground school instructor who has been working with Q400s since the beginning for Flybe.  He gave us some study materials, including a Q400 system guide designed for pilots.  When I say “designed for pilots,” I mean that it doesn’t go any more in depth than what they feel the pilots show know.  We don’t need to know how to fix the thing!  We just need to have a basic understanding to help us better understand why the emergency checklists direct us to do certain things.

One thing that was different in comparison to the last two times I went to simulator in Sweden, is that there was an actual ground school and only two simulator sessions.  Training in Stockholm was just 3 simulator sessions without a ground school.  I much prefer the training in Exeter I must say.  Our instructor was very professional and seemed to care more about our experience and what we did in the simulator than the instructors I had in Stockholm. 

Despite Kelvin and I never having flown together and him coming from another company, we did quite well together.  We had landing gear, electrical, and engine failure/fire scenarios over the two days of sim.  Our simulator slot was super late though, we usually showed up around 9 at night, and finished around 2 in the morning!  My solution was to sleep in and stay up late the days leading up to simulator and it worked quite well, although I missed the free breakfast on numerous occasions.

Late at night, or early in the morning on our last day, our instructor shook our hands and sent us off into the cold dark night in Exeter where we drove back on the left side of the road to our hotel.

 

The Journey Back

After sleeping in until about 11 the next morning and driving home late the night before, I strolled down the street and found breakfast, only to run into two other Arik pilots!  Erik and Javier had just arrived the night before and were coming to look for us at our hotel.  I sat down and talked with them for awhile then went up to check out.  Kelvin came down and joined us but he and I had to leave to fuel up the rental car before we dropped it off in our hotel parking lot as agreed upon with the rental company.

I went to the post office while the guys waited outside and sent off some stuff to Jose in Spain that he had wanted me to get him from the US, and then we all sat down for some coffee.  After that, we walked over to the bus station and were soon on our way back to London on a National Express bus.

The trip back to London was uneventful.  We each had two seats to ourselves like we did on the way to Exeter which was nice.  I used my android phone to create a wireless hotspot called “buswifi” but only Kelvin and I knew the password haha.  By doing that I was able to share my internet plan with him and let him access the internet.

We had about 3-4 hours to spare in Heathrow before departing on our Arik Air flight back to Lagos, so we just relaxed and surfed the net.  I treated myself to some Starbucks coffee which eventually came back to haunt me, as I wasn’t able to sleep at all during the whole 6 hour flight back!  Luckily I had some movies on my computer to pass the time.

 

Flying A LOT!

Since returning from training, the only days off I have had were either mandatory ones by regulation (can’t work more than 6 days in a row, or fly more than 30 hours in 7 consecutive days), and a couple while waiting for my Nigerian License to be renewed with my new simulator and medical.  It’s been awesome flying though!  The weather has actually been somewhat like it is where I am from.  Rainy, cloudy, but good visibility when the weather is clear. 

I’ve flown to a couple airports for the first time, Asaba and Ibadin; done some exciting visual approaches in Abuja; flown through and around some crazy thunderstorms; landed in Lagos with a quartering tailwind, heavy rain, and clouds 3-400 feet above the ground; and almost had to divert on a recent flight to Uyo.

There are so much blog-worthy stories to write about and so little time!  One thing for sure is that I MUST write more about some of my flights this rotation. It’s been a lot of fun.

 

Homeward Bound

I hope to get the time to write another blog post, but I am flying home for rotation in a couple of days, and have 6 legs tomorrow.  Let’s hope for the best!

Advertisement